Airplane fuselages are examples of structures which are made from composite materials (a.k.a. composites). Composite materials are materials made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties, that when combined, produce a material with characteristics different from the individual components. To create a composite, several layers of material or plies may be used. Each layer may be of a multitude of fibers, which may be grouped in bundles known as tows. The layers may be different from one another in terms of material and/or orientation of its tows. However, the tows' orientations may restrict the possible shearing of the plies. For example, plies having longitudinally aligned tows (a.k.a. 0 degree plies) have limited to no stretch in the direction of the tows, and may not accommodate shearing over certain curvatures.
Traditionally, to accommodate more aggressive curvatures, a multitude of overlapping 0 ply sections are usually disposed adjacent to one another in a direction of the curvature, each section draping over a small section of the curvature. Drawbacks of this process include discontinuity of the reinforcing fibers, thickness build-up attributed to the overlapping plies, labor intensiveness and added weight to the component.